Notes from the Field

TNGS representatives will be participants at the NOFA Summer intensive devoted to Prison Food Justice Programs. We're excited to connect and build collective knowledge with our colleagues from throughout the region engaged in this important work!

As part of the NOFA Summer Conference The New Garden Society will be presenting the workshop " Prison Gardens: Strategies for Therapy and Job Training" based on our 5 years of experience growing food & flowers alongside in prison yards our incarcerated students. Please join us! We will introduce participants to the work of The New Garden Society and present the context of why horticulture education in correctional facilities is critical and transformative for students and educators alike.

Professional horticulturist and Co-Founder of The New Garden Society, Renée Portanova, will offer a multi-media presentation open to the public on her experiences gardening alongside incarcerated students for the past 5 years. The prison courtyards and classrooms that The New Garden Society works in are largely invisible to the public. Through this presentation, Renée hopes to shine a light on local prisons and share The New Garden Society's experiences with the simple, transformative intervention of prison gardens. Light refreshments will be served at 9:00am, and the presentation starts at 10:00am. This event is sponsored by the Wellesley Garden Study Group.

A call to Green Industry professionals to join us and find out how you can share skills with our Boston-area incarcerated community by building and maintaining prison gardens. Past Volunteer Educators will give presentations each hour, followed by Q&A. Refreshments will be provided

Enjoy a tasty Flatbread pizza pie while providing much appreciated support to prison gardens. Flatbread Somerville is donating $1.75 for every small pizza sold and $3.50 for every large pizza sold to benefit TNGS from 5-11pm! This includes take out and delivery orders. So swing on by, say hi to the TNGS crew who will be there all evening.

2017 was an amazing year for The New Garden Society, thanks of course to the generous, ongoing support of our community. With your help we accomplished incredible feats:

1 Dumptruck of compost added to prison soils

3 Food pantries distributed prison-grown produce

12 Students, our average class size

80 Hours of horticulture instruction

600 Pounds of food grown on otherwise barren land

This Winter we also raised over $10,000.00, making it our most successful year-end fundraising campaign yet! Each of these accomplishments were made possible by the strong community of volunteers, staff and supporters around The New Garden Society who all go above and beyond to build hope and skills with our incarcerated neighbors. A huge, heartfelt thanks to all of you for investing in the future with The New Garden Society. We look forward to continuing to work with you in a bountiful and beautiful 2018.

The Simple Intervention of Prison Gardens

Since 2013, The New Garden Society has grown food and flowers alongside incarcerated students in Greater Boston. We are unable to share many of the details of our work here, but offer glimpses into the project of building connections between our local community of land care practitioners and incarcerated horticulture students. Together, we're transitioning prison yards built on former farmland back to productive landscapes...

"It changed me. I better be out there and water the flowers than be in the block or better than being miserable. Its enjoyable not to think about anything else. Takes you out of the mindset of being in this place. It frees you." -O.